Telikom staff, union to petition O’Neill again

MEMBERS of the PNG Communication Workers Union and staff of Telikom will today stage a peaceful protest march to Sir Manasupe Haus in Port Moresby to hand another petition to Prime Minister Peter O’Neill, pictured.
Union president Nug Mamtirin confirmed this at the weekend after Telikom staff stayed away from work for the third day on Friday.
He told The National that Telikom staff would continue to stay away from work until O’Neill listened to their call not to merge Telikom, bmobile and DataCo into Kumul Telikom.
“As I have said, Telikom was established by an act of Parliament, as such the legislative framework has not yet been done,” Mamtirin said.
“In other words, the act that governs Telikom has not been repealed.
“There is no need for merging at this stage.”
Mamtirin said the union remained adamant that Mahesh Patel be removed as chairman and Michael Donnelly as chairman of Telikom.
“We will petition the prime minister on Monday (today),” he said.
“We are planning to stage a peaceful march from Telikom Rumana to Pineapple Building (about 100m).
“We will be talking to Chie Secretary to Government (Isaac Lupari) to collect the petition from us.
“We are doing that with all our union members and staff of Telikom.”